VIENNA: Iran has halted its most sensitive nuclear activity under a ground-breaking deal with world powers, a confidential UN atomic agency report obtained by Reuters showed, paving the way for the easing of some Western sanctions.

The report by the International Atomic Energy also said Iran had begun diluting its stockpile of uranium enriched to the fissile concentration of 20 percent - a level that took it closer to the capability of producing fuel for an atom bomb.

The IAEA report to member states said: "The Agency confirms that, as of 20 January 2014, Iran ... has ceased enriching uranium above 5 percent U-235 at the two cascades at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) and four cascades at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) previously used for this purpose."

It was referring to Iran's two enrichment plants, at Natanz and Fordow. Cascades are interlinked networks of centrifuge machines that enrich uranium. Iranian state television earlier said Iran had suspended 20 percent enrichment at Natanz and that inspectors were heading to Fordow.

"The suspension of 20 percent enrichment has started at the Natanz plant and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are going to the Fordow plant," state TV quoted the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Behrouz Kamalvandi, as saying.

The IAEA report also listed other measures Iran had agreed to under the interim accord with the six world powers - the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia.

Those included an undertaking that Iran would not build any more enrichment sites during the six-month agreement, a step meant to buy time for negotiations on a final settlement of Tehran's decade-old nuclear dispute with the six powers.

Enriched uranium can have both military and civilian purposes. Iran denies Western allegations that it has been seeking to develop the capability to make nuclear bombs, saying it wants only civilian atomic energy.

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Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he wants to annex a fourth bloc of West Bank settlements, Army Radio reported Sunday, as two Gazans were wounded in Israeli airstrikes.

Until now, Israel has always spoken of its intention to annex three blocs of settlements in any future agreement with the Palestinians: the Etzion bloc in the south; Maaleh Adumim to the east of Jerusalem; and the Ariel bloc in the north.

The report said Netanyahu was proposing that Israel also keep hold of a group of settlements deep in the West Bank – Beit El, Ofra and Psagot – which lie to the north and east of Ramallah, the radio said.

A settlement bloc is an area where clusters of settlements have been established in relatively close proximity to one another, in which the majority of the West Bank’s 367,000 settlers currently live.

If Israel was to keep hold of the Beit El bloc as well as the others, it would mean annexing a total of 13 percent of the occupied West Bank, the radio said, describing it as a “very large percentage” of the territory.

“In the negotiating room, Netanyahu is talking about 13 percent of territory,” the radio’s diplomatic correspondent Ilil Shahar said, quoting sources close to the prime minister. “Netanyahu is proposing to a [land] swap of 3 to 4 percent then paying for the rest.”

In previous rounds of negotiations, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2001 spoke of Israel annexing 6 to 8 percent, and in 2008, then premier Ehud Olmert spoke about 7 percent.

The Palestinians want to keep Israel’s annexation of land they want for a future state to an absolute minimum, and have spoken of a maximum land swap of about 2 percent.

Netanyahu’s office refused to comment on the report.

Shaul Arieli, an expert on mapping and the future Israeli-Palestinian borders, described the proposal as infeasible.

“If we’re really talking about 13 percent, we’re talking about an idea that’s a nonstarter from the Palestinian point of view,” he told the radio.

“ Israel does not have the ability to compensate the Palestinians at that level, our potential for compensation is not more than 3 to 4 percent, and of course the idea of paying is unacceptable.”

Israel and the Palestinians embarked upon a nine-month track of direct negotiations at the urging of Kerry, at the end of July, which appear to have made little progress.{...}

Currently, Kerry’s main focus is trying to get the sides to agree on a framework to guide the negotiations forward in the coming months.

Also Sunday, two Palestinians were hurt, one critically, in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, which the military said had targeted a senior Islamic Jihad militant.

The airstrike, the third in 12 hours, came a day after militants fired another rocket at southern Israel, prompting a sharp warning from Netanyahu.

“We are determined to maintain quiet in the south,” he told ministers at the weekly Cabinet meeting. “We will do so by a policy of preventive action and strong reaction against those who try to harm us or who harm us.”

“I suggest that Hamas take our policy into account,” he said, referring to the Islamist movement that rules Gaza.

Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the strike had hit a motorcycle in the northern neighborhood of Saftawi, leaving its rider, a 22-year-old man, in critical condition.

A 12-year-old boy who was standing nearby suffered moderate wounds in the raid, he told AFP.

Shortly afterward, the Israeli army confirmed the strike, saying it targeted a “senior operative” in the radical Islamic Jihad movement, identified as Ahmad Saad and accused of planning an imminent attack on Israel.

Over the last month, tensions have risen in and around Gaza after a year of relative calm, with four Palestinians and an Israeli killed since Dec. 20.

"Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he wants to annex a fourth bloc of West Bank settlements, Army Radio reported Sunday, as two Gazans were wounded in Israeli airstrikes"

Now that is funny... 2 gazans wounded in Israeli airstrikes? LOL

But not to worry those innocent Gazans were struck WHY? We don't see anything about that til Deuce posts part 2...

"Also Sunday, two Palestinians were hurt, one critically, in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, which the military said had targeted a senior Islamic Jihad militant.The airstrike, the third in 12 hours, came a day after militants fired another rocket at southern Israel, prompting a sharp warning from Netanyahu."

Now that's called selective reporting...

The truth? Over a dozen missile attacks from gaza have occurred in the last 7 days. Some volleys contained as many as 6-12 rockets/missiles.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticized the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for its recent decision to postpone an exhibit on Jewish connections to the Holy Land due to objections from Arab countries.

The exhibition, called "People, Book, Land -- The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land," had been scheduled to open on Jan. 20 at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris.

But late last week, UNESCO abruptly announced it was delaying the exhibit after 22 Arab member states said in a letter that it could disrupt Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The U.N. agency also said it also needed extra time to revise "unresolved issues relating to potentially contestable textual and visual historical points" that member states could perceive as "endangering the peace process."

At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Netanyahu slammed the UNESCO move.

"The explanation given [by UNESCO] was that it would harm the negotiations," Netanyahu said. "It would not harm the negotiations. Negotiations are based on facts, on the truth, which is never harmful. But what does harm the negotiations is the automatic summoning of Israeli ambassadors in certain countries regarding matters of no substance, while significant violations by the Palestinian Authority pass without a response."

What is amazing is? In a day where 4.5 million syrian refugees exist, real ones, not like the fake palestinian so called refugees, (90% of so called palestinian refugees are not refugees but decedents of displaced/refugees, the ONLY people in the world who are generational labeled "refugees") syrians in Aleppo are being starved to DEATH (not like the fake bullshit from the gaza strip where there is NO food shortage) People point to Israel and apartment blocks as "destabilizing"

Notice, folks, how old (his description) Rufus never did answer the question concerning Benghazi, but immediately changed the subject and attacked me mercilessly ad hom........this is how things used to be done around here but these days everyone but Ruf the Old is cleaning up their acts, it seems.....he's even consigned me to 'THE DEATH PANELS'

heh

He did use, surely unconsciously, the term "unfortunately" though, out of long old usage, when he surely really meant "fortunately".....:)

Israel is often portrayed, even from within, as racist and hateful toward Arabs. Naturally, there couldn't be any Arabs serving in the Israeli army, and certainly none proudly doing so.

Not so! The reality is that many thousands of Arabs and Arabic-speakers are not only Israeli soldiers, but outspoken advocates of both the IDF and the Jewish state they serve.

One of the Facebook pages for Arabs in the Israeli army posted a video interview this week with a young Mona Lisa Abdo, a young Israeli Arab Christian who recently completed her IDF service.

The video is in Arabic, so most of our readers won't understand the narration or dialogue, but it remains a powerful rebuttal of all who claim that Israel is a racist, apartheid or otherwise discriminatory nation.

The Arabic intro text posted to Facebook along with the video read:

"Flashes of our Military: Mona Lisa Abdo - Mona Lisa tells us her unique story that deserves our respect and appreciation. Young Mona Lisa...volunteered to serve in the IDF, even though by law Israeli Christians are not conscripted. Mona Lisa not only volunteered for service, but struggled to join an infantry combat unit. Last week, she successfully completed her military service. We appreciate you Mona Lisa! You are a role model for us all."

The video received numerous comments and remarks, most of them hostile. But the comment section was also notable for the not-insignificant number of replies by Israeli Arabs, writing in Hebrew, encouraging Mona Lisa to pay the haters no heed.

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North Korea pulled out of the NPT, so they cannot have illegal nukes either, for the same reason. Brilliant lawyering.

That reminds me. On Sunday a new bill was proposed in the Ukrainian parliament, according to which visitors to the grave of the famous Rabbi Nachman of Uman will be charged $100 for a day's entrance to the tomb. The ol' biter bit routine.

In their November 2012 report, the IAEA stated “Iran has carried out activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. This information, which comes from a wide variety of independent sources, including from a number of Member States, from the Agency’s own efforts and from information provided by Iran itself, is assessed by the Agency to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that, prior to the end of 2003 the activities took place under a structured program; that some continued after 2003; and that some may still be ongoing.”In their most recent report, the IAEA restated its previous concerns and demands; “Since 2002, the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran is required to cooperate fully with the Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency.”The IAEA continues to affirm that “While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”Between 2006 and 2010, the UN Security Council, concerned that Iran was attempting to develop a nuclear weapons capability, passed six resolutions (1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, 1929) dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.

Resolution 1696, passed in 2006, called for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program and reconsider its construction of a heavy water reactor at Arak. It also called for the international community to enact an array of sanctions against Iran and specific Iranian peoples/entities.The five Security Council resolutions passed since then have maintained 1696’s demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program, but, in contrast to 1696, they have demanded that Iran suspend rather than reconsider construction of the Arak heavy water reactor. New sanctions were also steadily added with each resolution.

Take the blame and revenge out of justice and see what is left.Remove the hierarchy from mercy and see what is left.People want to see justice done, just not to them.People want to receive mercy, but are loathe to dispense it.

Remove a bucket of water from a pool, Tao can be found in the hole that remains.

Eighteen guys with box cutters lured us into spending a trillion dollars and thousands of American soldier's lives helping the terrorists recruit thousands more of their kind. Nukes are of no use against them. Meanwhile, the ever vigilant NSA has monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone just in case. Is it possible that the leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union is a secret Muslim terrorist?

Obama resisted arming any Syrian group despite Republican pressure to do so. The idea that he then decided to run a secret program to do the thing he had refused to do when pressured to do so is just plain silly. You can and must do better than that, Bob.

Iran is a party to the NPT but was found in non-compliance with its NPT safeguards agreement and the status of its nuclear program remains in dispute. In November 2003 IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei reported that Iran had repeatedly and over an extended period failed to meet its safeguards obligations, including by failing to declare its uranium enrichment program.[22] After about two years of EU3-led diplomatic efforts and Iran temporarily suspending its enrichment program,[69] the IAEA Board of Governors, acting under Article XII.C of the IAEA Statute, found in a rare non-consensus decision with 12 abstentions that these failures constituted non-compliance with the IAEA safeguards agreement.[23] This was reported to the UN Security Council in 2006,[70] after which the Security Council passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend its enrichment.[71] Instead, Iran resumed its enrichment program.[72]

In April 2010, during the signing of the U.S.-Russia New START Treaty, President Obama said that the United States, Russia, and other nations are demanding that Iran face consequences for failing to fulfill their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that "we will not tolerate actions that flout the NPT, risk an arms race in a vital region, and threaten the credibility of the international community and our collective security."[83]

You got your asses handed to you in the Lebanon War of '06, so if you want to start some shit with Iran, welcome to it, as for the US, we need to prepare for the Israeli attempt to bring down our civilization.

You got your asses handed to you in the Lebanon War of '06, so if you want to start some shit with Iran, welcome to it, as for the US, we need to prepare for the Israeli attempt to bring down our civilization.

LOL Southern Lebanon was destroyed. Hezbollah SURVIVED so that qualifies has "ou got your asses handed to you in the Lebanon War of '06" you are one dumb person.

WP: By 25 August 63% of Israelis polled wanted Olmert to resign due to his handling of the war. The Jerusalem Post said that " if you fail to win, you lose" and that as "Hezbollah survived, it won the war."

An unusually apologetic Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's secretary-general, admitted in an interview with the Lebanese NTV on 27 August that he would not have ordered the cross-border operation (terror attack and kidnapping) if he had known the scale of Israel's response.

Teresita RedingerMon Jan 20, 11:51:00 AM ESTWP: By 25 August 63% of Israelis polled wanted Olmert to resign due to his handling of the war. The Jerusalem Post said that " if you fail to win, you lose" and that as "Hezbollah survived, it won the war."

78% of all Israelis, if asked, would rate your understanding of Israel and Jewish issues about as dense as a week old bowl of hummus. Now you site polls?

HR 7 eliminates medical-expense deductions for abortion care, which would essentially raise taxes on women who opt to have an abortion, something that many low-income women couldn¹t afford. The IRS would then have to be the ones to verify if the women obtaining the abortion who claim a medical-expense deduction under the provisions of either rape, incest or women¹s health to ensure they¹re not committing tax fraud.

The damage report suggest a greatly reduced payload. Shortly, Israel will be able to hit from the air a single target with the equivalent of a .50 caliber round. That is a mixed blessing.

When Hezbollah next decides to mix it up, Israel will be expected to make all clean kills. That is not going to be possible because Hezbollah has placed missile platforms in apartments, schools, mosques etc. - anyplace that increases the probability of collateral damage. By the way, all this has been done by Hezbollah while the Rice preventative guarantee has been in place.

Ms t, your reference to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish figures in that lived 3200 years before arabs invented their national identity of "palestinians" reminds of all of the jewish connection to "greater israel".

thanks for once again supporting the Jewish connection to the lands, all the lands, of Historic Israel.

They didn’t ask the customer what they wanted. And I think that’s the fundamental problem with Obamacare. It meets the needs of very poor people because you’re giving them health insurance for free. But it doesn’t really meet the needs of healthy people and middle-class people.”

The president and his Democratic allies are finding it harder to make people buy insurance than they’d expected. Will ObamaCare’s individual mandate survive?

Last month, the administration announced that anyone with a canceled 2013 individual insurance plan would be exempt from the “individual-responsibility requirement” this year, and would be allowed to buy the catastrophe-only insurance previously offered to those age 30 or under.

This exemption is likely only the first of many. How, for one, can the administration exempt people who had insurance last year but not exempt people who were uninsured because they couldn’t afford coverage?

ObamaCare’s architects were always ambivalent about the mandate. They knew compulsion was necessary to make their system work — but, fearing a backlash, opted for a fairly weak penalty for those who didn’t obey. Oops: They wound up with a mandate that still provokes resentment, yet probably won’t work.

The US Supreme Court weakened the mandate even as it was saving ObamaCare. The law’s authors hoped that the mandate would create the perception that insurance enrollment is now obligatory, but the high court made it clear that Congress has no authority to institute such a requirement. The justices ruled that the mandate could stand only as an optional tax, not as a fine for noncompliance.

So you’re not breaking the law by not buying (overpriced) ObamaCare-compliant insurance; you’re just making the legal choice to pay the tax instead.

And that tax will generally be far lower than ObamaCare premiums. That’s the clear conclusion of a new study by the 2017 Project, which compares premiums in the ObamaCare exchanges in the 50 most populous US counties to the tax that households could pay instead.

This year, that tax equals the greater of two numbers: 1) $95 per adult in a household, plus half of that amount for each child, up to $285 for an entire household, or 2) 1 percent of household income in excess of the tax-filing threshold ($10,150 for singles, and $20,300 for married couples).

So, for instance, a 31-year-old single man making $30,000 in Columbus, Ohio faces a tax of $198.50, more than $2,000 less than the cheapest option in Ohio’s ObamaCare exchange, even including his taxpayer-funded subsidy. For a 36-year-old San Diego woman making $40,000, the tax is $298.50, or nearly $2,400 less than the cheapest policy on the California exchange. She’s not eligible for a subsidy.

ObamaCare can’t work if the young and healthy don’t sign up in large numbers — yet the law creates a clear incentive for them to opt out.

There’s more: The law also guarantees that you can always choose to buy during the next annual enrollment period — so if you fall seriously ill and find that ObamaCare has become a better investment, you can buy it then.

The ObamaCare law thus made insurance a less valuable product for most people, even as it pushed up the cost of buying it.

The coercion of the individual mandate was supposed to balance the equation, but it’s far too weak to do so — and it’s getting weaker each time the administration proclaims another exemption.

Yes, the tax for opting out is scheduled to rise in coming years. In 2015 and 2016, the tax rate for those paying based on their household income will rise to 2.0 and 2.5 percent, respectively. But many middle-income families will still find that cheaper than buying ObamaCare insurance.

It’s also hard to see these taxes going up without even more backlash. ObamaCare is already an extremely unpopular program, before anyone has been taxed for not signing up. When Americans realize that they’ll owe even a modest tax for opting out, pressure will grow to exempt everyone from paying it.

ObamaCare’s authors wanted to use both a carrot and a stick to make the law work, but neither one looks effective. The subsidies for coverage are concentrated on the lowest-income households, not the middle class, and the mandate was watered down. So if ObamaCare is to succeed, it will have to do so based on its attractiveness to consumers.

That should make the law’s proponents very worried, indeed.

James C. Capretta is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Jeffrey H. Anderson is executive director of the 2017 Project

The way it is structured one would have to be a rather dense young person to buy into it......just buy into it when you get sick......pre-existing conditions are covered......it's only a 'good deal' for those that don't have to pay for it....the old are headed to the death panels.......and the rates are rising on the middle class.....

What a truly brilliant program........only a government could come up with this craparoo.....

6.2 million people who had insurance have now had their insurance cancelled......Fox News......the only reliable source mentioned on this blog concerning ObamaCare......be wary, be very wary, of any other 'source' of ObamaCare numbers....and certainly do NOT trust the government numbers......

It doesn't matter how the numbers are reported, because eventually X number of people are going to sign up, there will be a shortfall of Y dollars, and Obama will have his hand out to the taxpayer to make up the difference, and at that point all the bullshit numbers will fade away.

The so-called Syrian Resistance does not represent the Syrian resistance movement. Turkey is providing refuge to its leadership, who dare not enter Syria for fear of capture and execution by the majority resistance groups uninvited to the peace talks. As usual Putin's government is doing its best to keep the wheels off the tracks. If Iran shows, the Saudis won't. After months of waiting, this is the best the planners/participants could do. On a positive note, no one has yet raised the issue of the shape of the table or its alignment to Mecca.

One does hope in all this posturing that one or more of the grandees will raise the pressing issue of relief for the sundry refugees. Since it is probably out of the question that food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc. would be allowed in under direction of neutral parties, the poor and displaced will continue to suffer – the Ethiopian famine comes to mind.

.....the snows of Sochi will turn scarlet red....I recall the time the moslems invaded the Olympic Village so long ago.....Israelis were the prime target then, IIRC......these days any old non believer will do.....

"President Barack Obama says he would not let his son play pro football"

---

IF he had a son, and IF that son were totally unlike his Big Eared Moronic Dufus Dad and WANTED to play the game instead of smokin weed w/the brothers, Obamie SAYS he would not let him, depending on the results of a polling of the girls on The View, IF as we all know would not be, Michelled had not called the shot.

...and IF I could remember the Old Saw about IFs, I would, but I can't.

For once when next provoked into war, Israel should go "all in, balls out" - no truces, no ceasefires, no armistice. No, Israel should go for the kill. It should take her enemies two generations just to clear the rubble and get the lights on. Total surrender is what I "be ta'ken bout!" Finally, all territory abandoned by the enemy in flight becomes irrevocably the property of Israel by way of reparation.

As to timing, at some point China will threaten Taiwan, Viet Nam, Tibet, Japan, etc. Iraq will totally unravel into civil war. Turkey will collapse and wildly look for a villain - Kurds have filled the role heretofore. Black Widows et al will launch attacks in or near the Olympics and Putin will react with his usual silk-gloved finesse. With any of these events the eyes of the world will be glued to the action.

If coincidentally Muslims decide to take some shots at Israel, such action will serve as the trigger. The rest will be history. Israel needs to make the most of the situation unapologetically, with the phone to DC off. And the first Jewish general to stray from the plan, mouthing political platitudes, should be summarily arrested and removed from the field clamped in irons.

Teresita RedingerMon Jan 20, 08:38:00 PM ESTI've got you down for the collapse of American civilization.

You have made that point repeatedly. Maybe if you try it with a ukulele next time you will get some feedback. In the instance, obviously, I am addressing a regional conflict. The collapse of the rest of the world will have to await another occasion and I strongly suspect will take care of itself.

Joko Widodo, Jakarta's governor and the most electable of possible contenders for presidential elections later this year, according to a variety of polls, staked his gubernatorial campaign in 2012 on improving Jakarta's core problems, including flooding.

...

Yumi, a 31-year-old mother of two who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, has been at a tent shelter near her flooded neighborhood in East Jakarta for a week.

"I was hoping things would be different [this year], but what can you do?" she said.

As I have written many times, the goal has always been Syria. Now, if someone thinks that the Russians, Iranians and Syrians are going to be fooled about who’s actually behind this proxy eastern front being opened up against Assad, I’d like to ask now, a year-and-a-half later, do you think they were ever fooled about who was behind the arms running operation out of Benghazi and eastern Libya where this all started? No and HELL NO. This latest front, just as the first and now failed fronts in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, is all about plausible deniability, or PD as it’s known in the tradecraft. It’s the magic act where sleight of hand and deception rule the day in “the hall of mirrors” that is Mideast politics, a reference again to the aforementioned article written by Michael Reagan.

Syria will not implode and it will not succumb to some rag-tag army of militants. The anti-Assad operation needs Western and external assistance. Putin is aware of our machinations, as are other leaders. So, when all of this comes unraveled, and it will, look for it to explode eastward into Saudi Arabia, into the Arab sea, north into Iran and all the way to the Strait of Hormuz. And when, not if it does, that attack will not just damage shipping and the free flow of oil into Western markets, it will crush the dollar and with it the hopes and dreams not just of the U.S., but western civilization itself.

It wasn't about anything, something about making punch, and then we started fighting and I slipped and he had me down kneeling on my chest and choking me with both hands like he was trying to kill me and all the time I was trying to get the knife out of my pocket to cut him loose. Everybody was too drunk to pull him off me. He was choking me and hammering my head on the floor and I got the knife out and opened it up; and I cut the muscle right across his arm and he let go of me. He couldn't have held on if he had wanted to. Then he rolled and hung onto that arm and started to cry and I said:

"What the hell you want to choke me for?"

I'd have killed him. I couldn't swallow for a week. He hurt my throat bad.

********

Thus begins the short story "After The Storm", a series of images of the impossibility of making real human contact, and the frustration of all things. It is a Life Sucks story, with a life sucks ending......

He did indeed kill the man.

>>>>Well, I went out of there and there were plenty of them with him and some came out after me and I made a turn and was down by the docks and I met a fellow and he said somebody killed a man up the street. I said "Who killed him?" and he said "I don't know but he's dead all right", and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside of Mango Key and she was all right but she was full of water.<<<

It wasn't about anything.

Much as I love Hemingway, and I think this little story is a real work of art, my Niece has more wisdom in her cute little toes than this writer here. Hem does express other views, and is not, like some here, entirely a Life Sucks guy. But this is indeed a grim tale, and the worst images are yet to come.....

One of the key complaints about Obama even among his base is that while he is perfectly willing to talk the talk he is frequently unwilling to walk the walk.

A good example is that with the election coming up this year and as an offset to the various scandals his administration has been embroiled in, he has decided to launch a populist campaign to help the little guy and reduce income inequality, a worthy goal; however, the words sound a little hollow and cynical when his administration endorses policy such as the following.

One of the most promising of these battles takes aim at an egregious set of agreements that allow corporations to sue national governments. Until three decades ago, governments could pass laws to protect consumers, workers, health, the environment and domestic firms with little threat of outside legal challenge from corporations. All that changed when corporations started acquiring the “right” to sue governments over actions—including public interest regulations—that reduce the value of their investments. These rights first appeared in little-known bilateral investment treaties. Twenty years ago, corporate lawyers embedded them in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Today, more than 3,000 trade and investment agreements and even some national investment laws grant foreign investors these powers.

The Obama administration is attempting to insert similar anti-democratic investor protections in new trade and investment agreements with countries that border the Pacific and with the European Union. Hoping to expedite the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), congressional leaders introduced fast- track trade promotion legislation on January 9 that would severely limit Congress’s ability to amend such agreements. The widely anticipated move set off a storm of protest from unions, environmentalists, liberal members of Congress and others, and will likely remain a high-profile fight in the coming weeks...

I just read an article today that argued that all the poor need to do is take a lesson from the rich and get out there and work. We constantly here of complaints about the oppressed rich who are forced to support the 'takers' at the bottom of the political. And while there are various arguments offered in support of this take, the author in the following article compares the US economy with that of leftist Brazil and asks the question

It would certainly be wonderful if Wednesday's peace conference in Geneva were to result in some kind of blueprint, however fragile, for winding down a Syrian civil war that is now approaching the three-year mark. The carnage has consumed some 130,000 lives -- at least half of them civilians -- turned 2.4 million Syrians into refugees in neighboring countries and displaced another 6.5 million within Syria itself.

Add to this devastation the children who have lost one or both of their parents, the destruction of essential infrastructure, the outbreak, actual or potential, of multiple diseases and the scarcity of basic necessities, and what's evident is that Syria is being consumed by catastrophe. Syrians will feel its malign effects for years to come, as will people in adjacent countries, particularly Lebanon and Iraq, where Syria's sectarian war has aggravated Sunni-Shi'a tensions.

With all of these factors in play, it appears unlikely that a substantive and sustainable resolution will be reached in this week's "Geneva II" peace talks.

Geneva II is a joke. While the conception made sense the application is ridiculous.

So you threw a party and no one came. Kerry and his boys go out of their way to get the SNC a body of dissidents that are in exile and thus have little legitimacy with the other groups that are doing the fighting. The SNC has little power, military or political, but is favored by the US because it seems less radical than the others there. Of those others there only about half will attend. Saudi Arabia will attend but at the insistence of the US Iran won't. Iran won't be allowed to attend because it won't agree to the US precondition that it support regime change. The Assad government will attend although it is hard to see how it could agree to Assad stepping down since that would be equivalent to him signing his own death warrant. If Assad doesn't step down, most of the key opposition groups won't even consider an agreement.

The movie “Lone Survivor” didn’t get any Oscar nominations, but perhaps it should’ve been nominated for Most Unlikely Politically Incorrect Picture of the Year.

It’s based on the true story of a mission in Afghanistan that goes disastrously wrong. A four-man team of Navy SEALs hunting down a Taliban commander is stumbled upon by a couple of goatherds in the mountains of Kunar province. Deciding to let them go, even though it will compromise them, the SEALs are subsequently outnumbered in a fierce firefight. Three are killed, and a Chinook helicopter attempting to relieve them is downed, killing another 16 Americans. The only survivor is a SEAL named Marcus Luttrell, who is played by Mark Wahlberg and wrote a book about the mission.

None of this is remotely controversial material. How could anyone be offended by a movie about a Navy SEAL fighting with everything he has to save himself and his buddies and improbably surviving an epic ordeal? Yet the brickbats have been flying from the snotty left: Propaganda. Simplistic. Racist...

Several years ago, Hollywood made a bunch of tendentious anti-Iraq War movies, all of which flopped. “Lone Survivor” is one of the few recent war movies that have been a success at the box office. It’s not hard to understand why. It takes a perverse hostility to all that is great and good in the US military not to find it gripping and inspiring.

It's hard to disagree with this article's focus which is on both the hypocrisy of the left and on the dedication of the individual soldier who goes where he is ordered and does the job he is told to do.

However, the real argument is a larger one. Should the soldier actually be there in the first place, now, years after the initial mission objectives were accomplished?

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.